Gwendolyn Brooks: An Analysis Of 'We Real Cool'

The poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a very interesting and clever writing piece. This poem open like a play, with the title, “The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.” As we analysis the poem we understand that these seven pool players are at the Golden Shovel pool hall. As the word “Golden” reminds of us of money, sunshine, and youth, among other things. Its early summer, so it might be "Golden" outside, but we 're willing to bet it doesn 't look "Golden" inside the pool hall, which makes the name ironic. Nevertheless, the word "Shovel" is also an ironic word. As we associate shovels with hard, manual labor, which is one thing the seven pool players are definitely not doing. This is because they are lazy, and their tool of

Unfortunately, they are lineated the way they are because these uneducated drop out pool players have a limited vocabulary. Brooks makes great use of rhyme throughout the poem, by using words such as: "cool", "school", "sin", and "gin" (3-8). These are rhymes that appear at the end of lines, while this rhyme scheme compliments the theme, it is directly towards a young audience. Hence, why Brooks is talking about these pool players that are supposed to attend school. The poem has an up tempo beat, very similar to a rap song, making it even more appealing to young readers, as this relates back to the way the poem is lineated and thus, making the poem “cool.” Alternatively, this also refers the poem to a dialect, more specifically an African-American

We Strike straight. We” (5-6). The frequent use of alliteration has a percussive effect, similar to crashing ciphers or the boom of a dual bass, “Sing sin” (7), “Jazz June” (9). These lines also symbolize their music tastes, as the pool players seem to know something about the deep jazz culture. Imagery is also used in this poem, as it also creates an image of their intensive dancing and self-indulgent enjoyment of life which distracts them from the final sentence of the poem, “Die soon” (11). This explains that there is a cost to such enjoyment of life and why it cannot be ignored at the end of the day. Nonetheless, as there are no direct examples of figurative language in the poem, some of the descriptive details as being implied metaphors in their demonstration of young